MILFORD, Conn., June 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- SilverSky, the expert provider of cloud security solutions, today announced its role as a collaborator in releasing the results of the third annual Future of Cloud Computing Survey, conducted by North Bridge Venture Partners, GigaOM Research and supported by 56 other collaborating organizations. This year's survey is the largest to date, examining viewpoints on drivers, inhibitors and opportunities in cloud computing across a sample of 855 respondents, including business users, IT decision makers and cloud vendors. More than a third of respondents were C-level executives within their organizations.

Cloud adoption continued to rise in 2013, with 75 percent of those surveyed reporting the use of some sort of cloud platform – up from 67 percent last year. That growth is consistent with forecasts from GigaOM Research, which expects the total worldwide addressable market for cloud computing to reach $158.8B by 2014, an increase of 126.5 percent from 2011.

This year's survey finds several important shifts in why and how cloud computing is being used, obstacles to adoption, where cloud decision-making resides within organizations, and how the vendor landscape is changing. It also serves as a barometer for the industry's progression. Feedback from across the different categories of respondents was consistent, signaling a convergence of vendor and user needs. Further, the survey reveals that business is driving the revolution deriving clear benefits from cloud adoption in the form of continuous innovation and business agility to yield competitive advantage.

Survey Highlights

Business is dominating the use of cloud technology:

Organizations average 52 percent current use of applications that advance business priorities, compared with an average 36 percent that use applications that advance IT priorities – underscoring the increasing value placed by organizations on facilitating the delivery of services beyond IT via the cloud

Of the 16 cloud application areas tracked (8 business cloud applications and 8 IT cloud applications), 4 business cloud applications (file sharing, business productivity, CRM/marketing and social business/collaboration) are in use by more than half of all organizations, yet not a single IT cloud application is in use by more than half of all organizations

Still, going forward respondents stated that 6 out of the top 7 fastest areas of growth in cloud applications will be in IT areas: Big Data, mobile, systems management, backup/DR/BC, helpdesk and security

Over two-thirds (68 percent ) see greater migration to the cloud as bringing equal or better total cost of ownership (TCO) to the organization

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) leads but fastest growth is in Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), which will give way to Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) in five years:

SaaS remains the most popular form of cloud service, used by 63 percent of organizations, up from 55 percent last year

However, the fastest growth today is in IaaS, with usage rising from 35 percent to 45 percent, a 29 percent increase over the prior year

The top cloud companies cited are brand name, infrastructure players, including Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Rackspace, but 300 companies had less than 2 percent of responses each, indicating that there are a large number of up and coming companies, and no single company has captured all of the momentum

Meanwhile, platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is forecast to grow the fastest in the next five years, with 72 percent of respondents expecting to use PaaS in their organization within that time

Agility and scalability are the primary drivers for cloud adoption. However, the need for cloud services to support mobility and the ability for continuous innovation to drive competitive advantage through more integrated business processes are all key drivers for the future.

More than half of respondents cited business agility (54.5 percent) and scalability (54.3 percent ) as the main drivers

Cost is close behind with 48 percent citing it as a driver

Mobility is the next major driver with a quarter of the respondents recognizing that mobility is powered by cloud services

And innovation (22 percent) as delivered continuously from the cloud is ultimately leading to competitive advantage (14 percent)

Cloud APIs are also cited as important this year as users look to move beyond stove pipe applications to more integrated business services

Security is starting to lose its label as the primary inhibitor to cloud adoption as other significant adoption issues arise:

Though still the top inhibitor, security is declining year-over-year from 55 percent of respondents in 2012 to only 46 percent in 2013

At least as important to security, 46 percent described the management of IT as "more complex" with the growing use of cloud components, reflecting the immaturity of the cloud stack

Vendor lock-in (35 percent) and Interoperability (27 percent) continue to weigh on customer's minds as they look for best of breed choices in the schism between a few large players and the long tail of alternative emerging vendors

Reliability (22.3 percent) and complexity (21 percent) were among the top inhibitors, reflecting real world obstacles to an "always-on" services infrastructure

"CIOs are moving their critical workloads to the cloud to cut their costs, simplify their architectures and enable new opportunities. But security has always been a key concern. Customers are essentially entrusting services they can't do without to someone they don't know. Fortunately, this year's survey suggests that cloud vendors have an opportunity to provide more clarity, transparency and assurance about customer data protection than ever before. Customers may find that vendors are doing things better in the cloud than they can in-house. If this is the case, the time to switch is now!"

Michael Skok, General Partner, North Bridge Venture Partners

"Clearly, even in the 3rd year of our survey, we're still very early in the cloud-computing revolution. Yet the cloud formations we identified in last year's survey are clearly on an unstoppable rise. Self-empowered consumers and businesses are taking the lead, and in many instances, regardless of IT. But IT is investing heavily both adapting internal infrastructure and adopting public infrastructure to respond on demand while managing the inevitable issues of compliance and regulation through hybrid approaches. And to realize the promise of the cloud, there is a clear call for the industry as a whole to help reduce complexity, and provide better interoperability."

Describing a vision of Bring Your Own Cloud services (BYOC) and the new reality of what Skok calls "Boundary-less" computing and "Out-servicing" he continued:

"Cloud services are being adopted and used in a "boundary-less" way where users are seamlessly integrating them at home and work across all their devices. And in an increasingly mobile pattern of business today companies are compelled to accept and adopt this BYOC model. In fact businesses themselves are adopting the boundary-less approach as they look to disintermediate and squeeze money from their value chains, focus on their core competencies and "out-service" (outsource non-core services) via the cloud. With all this in mind they are looking to gain competitive advantage from a core benefit of the cloud, namely continuous innovation by passing it along to their customers in the form of faster time to market and responsiveness to market needs." (For more including industry predictions, see blog post.)

David Card, Vice President of Research, GigaOM

"Technology buyers expect cloud adoption will make managing IT increasingly complex, yet the plurality also expect overall better cost of ownership. That's either wishful thinking or an intriguing opportunity for suppliers and systems integrators."

About SilverSkySilverSky is the expert provider of cloud security solutions. Born from our success as a managed services provider, our Security-as-a-Service platform delivers cloud-based software and managed services that protect critical information simply and cost effectively. By tirelessly safeguarding our customers' most important information, we enable growth-minded leaders to pursue their business ambitions without security worry. Our growing customer base includes 6,000 organizations in the financial services, retail, healthcare, energy, critical infrastructure and manufacturing sectors. For more information, visit www.SilverSky.com.

About North Bridge:

Established in 1994, North Bridge is an active partner for early-stage entrepreneurs, providing seed-to-growth financing for innovative companies looking to disrupt big markets. North Bridge partners, many founders themselves, work with entrepreneurs to apply their expertise in the creation, operation and scaling of market-leaders. The firm has offices in Boston, Massachusetts and Palo Alto, California. To learn more about North Bridge go to www.northbridge.com.